Ghost Tour (ch.10)

September 16, 1998

Reid had no idea what time it was when he woke up. Seemed like the engine had been off for a few hours. He learned quickly that you can literally fall onto your feet from an upper bunk. Sort of made it easier to start the morning.

In the bunk below, where he thought he’d heard knocking, still no evidence of human occupation, just a pile of blankets. Weird.

He squinted in the daylight as he padded into the empty front lounge. The heavy bus door opened as Roncho came back aboard from the outside world.

“Where are we?” Reid rubbed his eyes.

“Outside Columbus,” Roncho said. “You’re the first one up, wanna use the day room?”

Roncho handed him a keycard. Reid didn’t have to be asked twice. He grabbed his backpack and headed into the motel.

No breakfast buffet, but there was a coffee machine in the lobby. Reid poured himself a cup, reaching past a guy in a cheap suit who was taking up half the coffee station, adding little creamers one at a time.

“First time in Columbus?” the guy asked.

“Second maybe.”

“John Deere,” the guy said, “here for the convention. How ‘bout yourself?”

Seemed unlikely the guy’s name was John Deere, must be a farm equipment convention.

“Just passing through,” Reid said. Tell a guy like this you’re in a band, you’ll be stuck here an hour. Reid lidded his coffee and escaped with a cookie before there were more questions.

He found the dayroom. Made no financial sense to get multiple rooms when you weren’t staying over, but you need at least one so you can have a shower. Kenny was probably sleeping in the next room over.

Reid had learned to keep toiletries and a change of underwear in your backpack. That way you could race ahead while less clever bandmates went through their bags trying to figure out what they needed. It was especially nice to score a cherry room like this one. No one else had even used the toilet yet.

First shower since Clinton, he took a long hot one. Since no one else was waiting, he took his time shaving, too. He flipped on the TV, sat at the edge of the bed with what was left of his styrofoam coffee. The unfamiliar newscasters on the Columbus NBC affiliate reminded him he was in a different state.

Back at the bus, he bent slightly to unlock the door with the key dangling from the lanyard around his neck. Mistake. Rex pushed open the door from inside while Reid still had his key in the lock, knocking Reid backwards with the nylon lanyard now tightening around his neck.

He got back up onto his feet before completely strangulating himself. Recovering his dignity was another matter.

Note to self: Remove lanyard from neck before attempting to unlock bus door.

Liz stepped off just behind Rex, barely noticing any of this had just happened.

“Wait in the lobby,” she told Rex, just to be clear. “You can use the room after I’m finished.”

Others were waking up, hungover, rummaging through suitcases for clothes and toiletries.

“We’re parked here till one,” Roncho announced, “make sure you’re back here or you’re taking a cab to the venue.”

Reid sat down at the kitchenette table and drummed his fingers, contemplating a walk. If they were closer to town he might’ve poked around Columbus, but they were out on a business highway. Maybe he’d find a breakfast joint.

Roncho opened his laptop on the table and faced it toward Reid.

“Start typing.”

“What.”

“Tour journal. For the website.”

“Do I really have to do that now?

“It’s gonna get away from you if you don’t start. Just do it.”

Roncho walked away, confident that this needed doing and Reid was the one to do it. Reid looked at the empty word processing doc already opened for him. What the hell was he going to write?

He placed fingers on keys. He’d learned on a manual Smith-Corona back in high school, typing was the easy part.

Being on tour isn’t what you might think. Yeah, it’s fun to get to play music for a living, but there’s a lot of business that—

Reid stopped. He read what he’d written.

Completely. Lame. Erase.

What was he going to write then?

He thought about the guy at the barrier last night in Cleveland, the one whose cd he’d signed. If there was anyone who’d read this this, it’d be that guy, someone like that.

When Reid made that comment about the bus being possessed, the guy’s face lit up a little. Like, he wanted to hear something out of the box. He was ready for it.

It’s not like he’d reveal any of the truly creepy shit that’d happened recently. But if he could at least amuse himself, maybe this journal thing wouldn’t seem like this lame ass task he was stuck doing.

He started typing again, from the beginning.

People ask if the stories on Pareidolia are true, if we really live in a ghost town. The simple answer is: Yes.

Our practice space is in an abandoned factory. When we first moved in, we heard so much clanking going on, we thought it was still operational. There are some artists who have painting studios there and whatnot. We asked them, Hey, what are they manufacturing in this building?

They said, Nothing’s been manufactured here for 50 years, the place is haunted. We thought they were messing with us. We looked all over the place, we couldn’t find anything, but the sounds were still going on. If you listen to the demo for Pareidolia we made at the space, you can still hear some of the clinking and clanking in the background.

One time we showed up for practice, the space was locked but we heard someone playing bass inside. We went inside, no one was there. Liz had her bass in her gig bag so it’s not like anyone could’ve been playing it, but when she went over to her bass cabinet, it was still warm.

Stuff like that happens in Clinton all the time, that’s why we’re so happy to go on tour and put it behind us for a while. When we first got on the bus, our driver was like, you all can take any bunks but this one, this one stays empty.

He didn’t tell us why, and we still haven’t figured it out, but we’re pretty sure something happened on that bunk, something the bus company didn’t want us to know about. We thought we were free and clear, but turns out we traded in a ghost town for a ghost bus.

Reid stopped, reread what he’d written. He wasn’t sure what to think.

“You finished?” Roncho asked.

Reid handed him the laptop so he could read it.

“You really want to post that?” Roncho asked.

“Show Jordan.”

Jordan took the laptop and read the piece. The right side of his mouth curled into a slight smile. He handed the laptop back to Roncho.

“Post it,” he said. “No one’s gonna read it anyway.”

# # #

The Newport Music Hall was across from Ohio State. Once the bus resituated, it proved a good neighborhood to walk around a while. Reid and Liz found a trendy place for coffee. Reid built up to his real question so Liz wouldn’t think he was a nut job.

“How’d you sleep last night?”

“Wish I had a changing room, but can’t complain.”

“You hear anything…funny?”

“You mean Rex snoring?” she said.

“No, like, a knocking sound?”

She debated asking him if he’d smoked anything last night.

“Not that I recall.”

“Probably the ventilation,” Reid said, and let it drop.

She dragged him into a shoe store or two. He didn’t complain, at least not too loudly. They made it back in plenty of time for soundcheck.

They’d never played this venue before. Reid stood in the middle of the cavernous room next to Subs while Corey on stage knocked out some rudiments to test his kit.

“Nice stage,” Reid said to Subs. The place had been a proper theater before the seats were ripped out and they’d turned it into a rock club. It had a classic proscenium arch.

“We’ll see,” Subs said. He wasn’t thrilled about the system. Just drums so far and it was booming already.

They used their full soundcheck to make up for having missed a crucial one yesterday. At one point Jordan let the rest of the band keep playing and went out into the room to hear what it sounded like.

“Can you bring the bass down a little?” Jordan told Subs.

Subs did what Jordan asked without going into a lengthy explanation of what they were dealing with, no sense spooking him before the show. Once the room was full, it’d be a miracle if you could hear the vocals.

After soundcheck, dinner waited backstage. Most of Benzedrine were already eating at a long folding table.

“Baked ziti,” Billy Somerville announced, like, surprise surprise. Seemed almost every rock club in America served baked ziti.

Billy introduced guitarist Tommy Travertine, who was wearing tinted glasses, and drummer Aiden Dunlop, who was drinking something suspicious from a glass jar. Owen Kaye wasn’t there.

The two bands began to co-mingle for the first time. Reid was keen on talking gear with Tommy Travertine, but it seemed best to establish base level cool before asking too many questions.

Billy was beyond cool. When Liz sat down next to him, he dove right in.

“You’re obviously not one of these girlfriend-turned-bass-players…”

“Some of those are pretty good,” she said.

“True. But most wouldn’t interpolate a Bach cello suite.”

“You caught that.”

“Mmm hmm,” Billy said.

Aiden Dunlop stood up from his folding chair.

“Watch this,” he said.

“Here we go,” Tommy Travertine said, like he knew what was coming.

Folding himself in half, Dunlop placed his hands flat on the floor, sprang his feet skyward and executed a perfect hand stand. He proceeded to walk halfway around the table on his hands until equilibrium failed him and he fell back onto his feet.

X-13 clapped more enthusiastically than his own bandmates.

“Impressive,” Jordan commented.

“Shame the circus fired him,” Tommy said.

Owen Kaye arrived and everyone got quiet.

“Did I miss the floor show?” he asked.

“I have a feeling he’ll do it again, if you ask nicely,” Billy said.

Owen eased into an open seat. He looked around the table at the new opening act and smiled. The dance began. Surprisingly, it was Corey who spoke first.

“I saw you play Oneonta in 86,” he said.

Owen squinted at Corey as if trying to figure out who this guy was, but continued to smile graciously. Laurels were obviously being thrown.

“Sounds about right,” Owen said.

“I’m Corey…new drummer,” he added when he saw his name meant nothing.

“Right,” Owen said. He scanned the other new faces till he found the one he was looking for. “Jordan, right?”

“Hey Owen,” Jordan said, extending a paw across the table so the two could have a proper shake.

Jordan made sure to introduce Reid and Liz next. The chain of command was now reestablished after Corey, perhaps inappropriately, had jumped the gun.

# # #

The night was definitely Benzedrine’s.

X-13 had been working Cleveland for some time, Columbus not so much. The room was only half full at the beginning of their set, and there was a lot of beer talk as the crowd continued to fill in.

Subs rode the vocals as best he could. The board tape might turn out okay if Jordan went to listen later but, particularly battling the extra noise in the room, it was pretty messy.

The vibration Reid had experienced during Black Ice the night before did not seem to happen again tonight.

What he hadn’t realized back in Cleveland was that he’d kicked on his frequency shifter unintentionally. It had pushed some tones below 20 Hz into infrasound territory, where the human body can feel things its ears can’t hear.

This is not to say that there were no ghosts in the Agora Ballroom, their practice space, or on their tour bus for that matter.

It’s just that they were all separate entities, distinct from the ones Reid had begun to imagine and joke about in their online journal.

—

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